Tag: Website Navigation

Website Maintenance: Make an Index

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Many times we get too close to our own websites.  We know right where everything is because we put it there.  The problem is that what makes sense to us, often doesn’t make sense to visitors.  An easy way to ensure that items of a similar type are easily found is to make an index page.  When a site has an index page for a single topic then it serves to be a single point of contact that visitors can use to find the individual thing they are looking for.

Recently I was reviewing a client’s website.  We were in the process of updating it to support marketing efforts.  My client was heavily involved in doing events designed to give a sampling of how they help companies which converts some of the attendees to customers.  In fact, this was such a large part of their marketing matrix that they ran an event every two weeks.

So we outlined which events were coming up and made a list of 6 events for the quarter.  I jumped on my client’s site to see how each event was promoted.  I found 2 of the events that were featured on the homepage.  However the other 4 were MIA.

So I called my client and asked whether the events had pages on the site.  He assured me the events were there and walked me through the navigation.  Two of the events were available through banner ads but the ads cycled so they were only available 25% of the time.  It turned out one event never had a link set to it.  The sixth one was available through a buried link on a calendar document.

I was a dedicated visitor and I needed a guide to find the events I knew were there.  How many unmotivated visitors that don’t know about the events do you think made it to the event pages?  As you’d expect, very few.

The solution, make an events index page.  We placed an events link on the primary navigation so that it was easy to find what was on the calendar regardless of where a visitor went in the site.  The index page provided a handy list to site visitors as well as my client so that there was a simple reference of upcoming events.  Furthermore, promotions could point to the index or the individual event page depending on what’s most appropriate.

It’s a simple thing but one that can be lost as a site grows.  Make sure that any important category of your site has an index page so that visitors can easily get to the information you want them to see.

Internet Marketing, Web Maintenance , , , , ,

Define Success: Website

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Website metrics are often simplified to website metric, visitors. While the number of visitors is certainly important as we need traffic, many other metrics are a better measure of success on a website.

There are several web metrics that can be used to define success based on the company objective:

  • Bounce rate – This serves as a reverse goal, meaning a low rate is better.  Bounce rate designates how many people land on a page and then move away from the site.  It’s a great way to see if your content is delivering what visitors expect.
  • Time on Page – With a little analyzing you can see if people are using your webpages as you intend.  For example if it’s an article and they only stay a few seconds, then it’s unlikely that your content is engaging.  Conversely if it’s a directory and the time on page is low (and bounce rate isn’t high) it confirms that people understand the navigation easily and are finding the link to information they want.
  • Conversion – This takes some set up in the metric system but there should be clearly defined conversions for every site.  These are typically landing pages and a measure of how many people took advantage of a landing pages offer like newsletter sign ups, contact form, or event registration.

Truly valuable information comes from mixing these metric and analyzing the story it tells.  For instance viewing visitors to a conversion page and see how many people fulfilled the conversion is a powerful way of gauging offer and page layout effectiveness.

Don’t simplify website metrics into visitors only.  After all if people only visit the site and without taking any action, it’s unlikely that the website has fulfilled its real purpose.

Internet Marketing, Site Conversion, Web Maintenance , , , , , , ,

Website User Needs Can’t Be Presumed

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Site owners often tell me things like, “Users are going to love this feature” or “This tool is perfect for what our visitors should be doing.”  My response is usually, “Is that what testing has shown?”  The reason I ask this question is because many site owners make decisions on gut feel.  After making the gut call, many of them will lament/blame, “Users are really missing the boat with this, here’s all the great things they could be doing . . .”  Your users are not you, so don’t presume they feel just like you.  Do some testing to ensure that a feature or tool you are developing is something users desire.

Doing a short reality check on how well your presumptions match up with user needs is worth the effort.  In a recent conversation with a site owner, he was complaining about an event matrix tool that he had launched for his users to track events of interest related to his site’s content.  He was sure that every user would want to use it.  After spending significant time and energy, he discovered very few users had an interest.  He could have saved some time and/or developed a more desirable tool if he had done a reality check before investing in the tool.

Testing doesn’t have to be a giant undertaking, though for large sites or in depth campaigns it needs to be thoroughly planned.  For smaller sites it is less in depth.  Testing can be a sample of people that visit your site and provide feedback on how they use the site and what they’d like to see.  It can also be a user test session where a person uses the site and the site owner observes how and what they use.  This is sometimes more valuable, as actions will speak louder than words.

Here are the primary things to look for from the tests when deciding  if the feature you feel is great, actually cuts the mustard with users:

  • Navigation – A great tool is worthless if people can’t find it.
  • Usability – Users have to be able to easily use the feature or tool.  Make sure it is intuitive so that users will stick with it and get the maximum benefit.
  • Functionality – The feature or tool better do what you claim it will.  Setting expectations that aren’t met will harbor resentment.
  • Communication – You won’t have a lot of time to highlight your feature or tool using online communications.  Spend some time boiling it down to its most basic benefits so you can concisely generate interest.
Site Conversion, Web Maintenance , , , , ,